By the time I returned to my half-complete question, several people had started leaving and such. Regardless of what they were doing, there was still about fifteen minutes of exam time left - and I planned on using every second of it . . . . .
All right, I lied. I left with about five minutes of time left - hey, I got bored; sue me. But yeah, I looked over just about everything twice or thrice (is that even a real word? [Well, Microsoft Word™ says so . . .]). Really, it looked about as good as it ever would. I packed up all the loose sheets of torn-out bits (
heh, that was fun), and took my exam to the front table, where a veritable tribunal of teachers sat - not a single one of them a history teacher. Go fig, my English teacher was among them.
"Hey Ernest," he says to me, "how did the English one . . . oh yeah, you haven't taken it yet." He then proceeded to laugh (though in all fairness, this guy laughs at everything); I just kinda smirked, gave a quick nod good-bye, and headed out the door.
You know that big rush of freedom and release you get after these big things, right? Yeah, I didn't feel a thing of it - I was too busy cursing to myself about how badly I wrote that damn test. Of course, being me, I was cursing AND laughing (go fig), just because for some reason I wouldn't know any other way to express it. As I stepped I couldn't help but notice that my footfalls were very loud and heavy on the linoleum.
Meh, who cares . . . . . hey look, Jody's up ahead! Yeah, about half up the hallway swung lightly the braided tail I had known for [relatively] so long. All the while I just thought, "
hey, if I picked up the pace, I bet I could catch up to her and ambush her or something!" But no . . . the
gentleman within me decided to hold back . . . . . for now.
I rounded the always-open door to "Siberia", and found the aforementioned human getting her stuff into her bag and such. She turned around as the heavy footfalls came closer.
"Hey!" she says, a hint of restrained jubilation lingering on her voice - at least SOMEONE was happy about the test . . .
"Oh man . . ." I slur as I lumber to my locker, half shoulder-blocking Jody in the process. "THAT sucked ass!"
"I know!" she replies, "hey, which questions did you answer?"
"Ah hell, I don't even remember . . ."
So the two of us walked BACK through the hallway to finally escape that forsaken place - well, it's more or less forsaken, isn't it?
"And yeah, after I finished my test, I looked up and saw everyone had left. Then I felt better when I saw you and Jill and stuff were still writing," she told me.
"Yeah," I responded, "I think I left about five minutes after you did or so . . . yeah, I remembered August 6, 1944 and October, 1961 . . ."
"Ah, Cuban Missile Crisis!" she proudly proclaimed.
"Yup. Me thinks I used that as an example about two or three times . . ."
"Yeah . . ."
" . . I used 'indefatigable' in there too . . . . ."
So yeah, we hit that wonderful crossroad in the hallway, where she goes right, and I go left. We said our "have a nice day's" and all, and that was that. With that, I burst out the big main doors to the outside, took a deep breath, and took in the wonders of the land. The birds then flew out of the tree and flocked majestically across the clear winter sky . . . . . yeah, that didn't happen - it reads well though, don't ya think? No, I just opened the door (with my FOOT, in my typical "don't-feel-like-using-my-hand" panache) and hopped down the steps and onto the concrete below. I guess in a way it did feel pretty good to be out of there - after all, why wouldn't it?
I hit sidewalk (
yay, milestone!) and headed home. Out of instinct, I quickly pivoted and about-faced - what I figured. About the same time I reached sidewalk on my end, Jody reached likewise on hers. I was confused for a sec, since she crossed the street in a way that generally wouldn't take her home . . . . . then I remembered that's how you get to Petey's place from here. Yeah, I guess I kinda forgot that for a sec . . . well, in all fairness I just came out of a traumatic experience - at least give me that.
My whole way home, I couldn't help but keep thinking that I was in a bad way . . . . . oh well, that's a problem for another day - at least this test thing is done, and I won't have to do it ever again.
